9 thoughts on “Life In The Twenty-First Century”

  3. Hmmm, is it just me, or does this sound like part of a plot from a movie.
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    “…autonomous “robocopters,” equipped with 3D imaging laser technology”
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    But let’s just say, for instance, that ‘someone’ hacks into our computers and reprograms these to hunt our ships instead of the pirates? Or what if the hackers reprogram them to shoot at Iran or Syria so they can say we did it?

    Drones I get, remotely controlled please. But autonomous weapons seems like a bad idea.

  4. Is this really for pirates? Helicopters have short ranges and short loiter times; something like this looks more useful for anti-drug trafficking.

  6. Boy, Mashable reached into the wayback machine for a bunch of that…first, they used photos of the Fire Scout demonstrator built during the original proposal, that first flew in Jan 2000; the current airframe has significant differences and is much more capable. Then they act like LADAR technology and ATR is new. The LOCAAS program demonstrated a 7-inch diameter LADAR seeker with ATR to the level of ID in 1994, including flying it on an autonomous vehicle.

    To answer Daver, Fire Scout can stay in the air for several hours and operate over 100 miles away from the ship, so I think it could be used for anti-piracy operations.

    1. Thanks, I should have checked before posting. 110 miles out, five hours on station. So maybe some sort of high altitude blimp every couple hundred miles through the area subject to piracy, the drones are launched to investigate suspicious activity, if things look funny some sort of warship is dispatched to the area. It’d help if international law were modified so that the drone could fire on the suspect pirates, but that’s not likely.

      1. Refresh my memory, who was it that gave President Thomas Jefferson ‘permission’ to go after the pirates along the Barbary Coast?

  7. Nobody. He pretty much declared war on the countries hosting the pirates and they backed down. We could do the same, but won’t. We may be able to invade anyway–I remember some law that essentially said that if a country isn’t doing anything to restrict pirate activity launched from its borders that other countries were justified in invading to put a stop to the piracy. Again, we won’t.
    It’s pretty hard to try someone for piracy–it’s a bit hard getting witnesses. Piracy charges were traditionally brought in military tribunals, so there wasn’t quite the malarkey that a civil trial would require. There’s apparently some confusion over whether existing piracy laws only apply on the high seas or if they can be extended to territorial waters. Regardless, it’s a lot easier to kill them in the act than to arrest them and hold them for trial.

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